It was towards the end of the twelfth century that
the impetus for embellishing objects with literary inscriptions
revived, this time on ceramics produced in a variety of
techniques in Kashan and possibly elsewhere in Iran. This late
Seljuk period artistic trend may be related to Samanid epigraphic
ware, which petered out sometime in the eleventh century, in
terms of its comeback on the relatively affordable ceramic medium
and, as we shall see, in terms of its general ethical
significance. Rather than proverbs in Arabic, however, this wave
of literary epigraphy consisted almost exclusively of poetry in
Persian, allowing us to associate the phenomenon, on the modal
level at least, with the catalog of inscriptional poetry in
al-Washshas handbook. Nevertheless, in certain
respects this later development of literary epigraphy seems to
reflect not just the abiding demand for inscribed vessels in the
medieval Islamic world but also particular artistic trends which
distinguish the late Seljuk period.

Although there
is no abundant evidence for a continuous demand for poetic
epigraphy throughout the medieval Islamic periods, it would be
wrong to assume that there was a total hiatus between the Abbasid
and the Seljuk periods or that the practice was exclusive to
ceramic objects. A penbox dated 1148 in the Hermitagethe
earliest dated inlaid metalworkfor example, bears several
poetic inscriptions. One of these poems portrays the relationship
between the pen and the inkwell in erotic terms and another
relates the symbolic association between the writer and his
utensils. The practice of inscribing poetry for the fundamental
task of giving voice to a potentially utilitarian
object in accordance with both its function and its metaphorical
participation in related human activity and behavior also
extended to architectural contexts. The audience hall of the
palace of the Ghaznavid sultan Masud III (r. 1009-1115) in
Ghazni was inscribed with Persian verses in the epic style that
must have served to enhance the royal character of the ceremonial
space in which the sultan held audience. In a different tone,
Arabic poetic inscriptions written as graffiti on architecture
were collected in the tenth century by an anonymous author in
Iraq into an anthology called the Kitab al-ghuraba
(Book of Strangers). These verses of nostalgic and
frequently melancholic content are attributed to pensive
travelers searching for consolation in the face of temporary
homelessness.

The overwhelming majority of poetic epigraphy on
late Seljuk ceramics is in the form of the rubaci (quatrain), in Persian, most frequently
treating the subject of love. The rubaci is an epigrammatic expression which
consists of four hemistiches and its own metrical scheme of
Persian origin. As a succinct and predictable mode of poetic
expression, it served frequently as a poetic interpolation in
prose composition, both oral and written. Its popularity allowed
the rubaci to be embedded not only into other
textual contexts but also into visual or material contexts in the
form of inscriptions. This latter remarkable function of the rubaci in the late Seljuk period has been largely
unappreciated, as art historians, into whose research domain the
inscribed rubacis fall, have often dismissed and
sometimes even belittled these compositions. At best, these
poetic inscriptions have been seen as potential signifiers of
popular taste even if irrelevant to a fundamental art historical
analysis of the object on which they appear. And, at worst, they
have been compared, in a recent survey of Islamic art, to
greeting card doggerel of the order: Roses are red, violets
are blue. To-date only two scholars, both Iranian, have
made an effort to read and publish these poetic inscriptions but
neither was concerned to contextualize or explain the phenomenon.

Whatever one may think of their literary worth, the
remarkable presence of these poems on ceramic objects and tiles
merits an unbiased consideration. The inscription of rubacis as the sole or primary form of decoration
on objects, as we see on many examples, must have been a
compelling and direct invitation to engage with and read the
writing on the object (fig. 1). And it should not be too
farfetched to presume that the act of reading in all probability
resulted in the contemplation of the contents of the poem on the
topic of love. Like its Samanid predecessors, engagement with
epigraphic Kashan pottery yielded ethical insight through
recognition of the values communicated by the writing. However,
these poetic inscriptions are not directly didactic as the
earlier proverbs were. Rather, they require a primary awareness
of verses on the topic of love serving as a conduit to an
appreciation of the ethical exigencies of the experience of love.
Furthermore, the poems significance resides not so much in
socially-oriented messages embedded into social norms as with the
proverbs but is instead aligned on the level of the individual,
exploring the psychological dimensions of the experience of love.

Thus, a typical rubaci, one that was very frequently inscribed on
luster ware, reads:

In the world of love,
grief is no less than joy;

Whoever is not glad to
grieve, is not happy.

However wide the
wilderness of calamity may be,

I have seen that, for the
foot of love, it is not even a step.

Here, and in the
great majority of the other inscribed rubacis, the plaintive yet resigned voice of the
lover speaks of his recognition of loves demand for
self-sacrifice and his quest for happiness only within the
agonizing confines of his loverhood. Personal ethical insight is
to be gained from the idea that the quest for love is the
ultimate test of character. The primary means of achieving
righteousness is through the practice of virtues required of the
lover in his unconditional loyalty and service to the beloved.
Objects on which such sentiments are inscribed in the form of
poetry thus became a portable, material medium for the
contemplation of ethical values that were part and parcel of the
experience of love. But the nature of the epigraphic practice was
more complex than that and this becomes evident with objects and
tiles that carry not only poetic inscriptions but figural imagery
as well.

Three bowls painted in the minai
technique from the 1180s signed by the potter Abu Zayd are
decorated with a particular iconography which can be interpreted
as a recitation scene consisting of a figure set asymmetrically
off to one side reciting before an audience of possibly courtly
individuals (fig. 2). All three of these bowls are inscribed with
poetry, both on the interior and on the exterior where it is
followed by the peculiar signature of Abu Zayd. The signature on
the bowl dated 1186 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for
example, reads: Its narrator (qailuhu) and
writer/author (katibuhu) is Abu Zayd after (bacda ma) he made it (camilahu). This identification of Abu
Zayd as not just the potter of the ceramic bowl but also as both
narrator and writer/author of the verses
points in the direction of an artistic production where text and
image merge in meaning by means of recognition of the role of the
artist. Here, it is unclear whether Abu Zayd himself composed the
verses since the word katib could be interpreted either as
author or scribe. But his qualification as narrator
at the end of the inscriptional program sets up a semantic
parallel between text and image as the latter portrays the scene
of narration before an audience.

The earliest extant star tile by Abu Zayd, dated to
1203, depicts four figures seated outdoors and surrounded by
three lines of an undeciphered poem in Arabic, a partially intact
rubaci in Persian, and the signature of
the artist (see Ghouchani, Ashcar-i Farsi, p. 1). This last element of the
inscription, following the poetry, reads: Belonging to its
scribe (li-katibihi), Abu Zayd, after he made it (camilahu) and decorated it (sanacahu) on Wednesday eve of the end of Safar of
the year 600 of the Arab Hijra. This signature presents Abu
Zayd as maker and decorator of the tile and, additionally through
the phrase belonging to, assigns to him the role of
authorship of the verses he inscribed on the tile. Similar to but
more forcefully than the signatures on the bowls, the signature
on this tile indicates that text and image were conceived and
coordinated by a single artist.

It is on the basis of such signatures that we may
interpret text and image juxtapositions as integral components of
a complete composition, rather than as disjointed elements. Thus,
in similar asymmetrical recitation compositions of seated figures
surrounded by love poetry, the identification of the one figure
set off to one side takes on a special dimension. This figure,
whose position and hand gestures convey the notion of an oral
recital, could be linked to the voice of the poet of the
surrounding verses even in the absence of an explicit signature.
Such a conceptual linkage would have been primarily informed by
the analogous natures of the lover-beloved relationshipon the one
hand and the poet-audience/patron relationship on the other hand.
In this framework, the idea of an integrated text-image
composition is bolstered by the poet-audience imagery giving a
pictorial context to the lover-beloved relationship expressed in
the poetic text. Conversely, we may regard the poetry providing
the verbal context for the imagery.

The proliferation of figural imagery between the
late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries coincided with a new
wave of literary inscriptions. More than just a happy
coincidence, these visual and verbal representation worked in
tandem with each other to enhance the potential of the artistic
composition to speak to both aesthetic and intellectual
aspirations of contemporary society. Potters such as Abu Zayd
expanded the horizons of an artistic tradition which realized the
potential of the felicitous marriage between the
utilitarianand relatively affordableceramic vessel
and the ethics contained in the inscribed proverb or love poem.
Recognizing this potential brings us one step closer towards a
better understanding of the union of material and literary
culture in medieval Islamic societies.